


Wine

by MinervaFan



Category: Easy Street (TV) 1986
Genre: F/F, Vaguely incestuous, as the women are sisters-in-law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-06
Updated: 2005-12-06
Packaged: 2020-03-01 04:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18793024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaFan/pseuds/MinervaFan
Summary: Rivals and wine make for interesting experiences.





	Wine

Title: Wine  
Author: [](https://minerva-fan.livejournal.com/profile)[](https://minerva-fan.livejournal.com/)**minerva_fan**  
Genre: Easy Street  
Pairing: Eleanor/LK femmeslash, unconsummated  
Rating: PG-13  
Warnings: Vaguely incestuous, as the women are sisters-in-law  
Summary: Rivals and wine make for interesting experiences.  
A/N: Don't even want to know why I wrote this story. I am absolutely sure that I am the only person in the history of the universe to write _Easy Street_ femmeslash. Fairly sure nobody on my flist even knows this show (80s sitcom starring Loni Anderson as LK and Dana Ivey as Eleanor), so just pretend it's original fic.

There was no precedent for this experience, no warning in the build-up of years that brought us to this place. For what it's worth, I never hated her, not really, although anyone who saw us together in the early years would swear under oath I wanted her dead.

I didn't want her dead, just gone. Just gone out of my life and out of my brother's bed. When he died, I wanted her out of his will and out of his house. But, of course, that never happened. She was too nice and had the advantage of truly having loved him on her side; my ex and I didn’t stand a chance in court.

So we settled on an uneasy truce, each with her own allies and skills and weapons to cut and taunt. I look back on it now and see it for what it was, a slow-burning foreplay, a testing of defenses, equal parts baiting and biting.

She could hold her own with me in a way my husband never did. She won more than a few times, something my husband never did until that very last time when he got the last laugh with the red-haired stenographer and divorce papers.

I never cried when my husband left me. It seemed odd at the time, and she had commented on it. I suppose I loved him, in a way and after a fashion. I was angry that he betrayed me and humiliated me. But I was never really upset that he _left_ me.

I never understood why.

Without my only real ally, I lost ground and had to give in to her kindness sooner or later. Bitterness had become a way of life for me and giving it up actually caused physical pain now and then. Like when she made me laugh, against my will, so hard I cried—we were watching the Macy's Parade and she was making lewd comments about the balloons. It was crass, just what I expected from her, and I laughed anyway. The feeling of laughter pushing out hard in loud, awkward bursts from my chest was something I had to get used to with her.

So was being listened to, really listened to for the first time in my life. Having someone hear what I say and actually give a damn.

Of course I didn't trust her. Who could trust somebody who actually cared? What is that all about? People don't care, I used to tell her. It's all about the money or power or status, about what they can get by pretending to care and appearing altruistic or compassionate.

She called me cynical, and I never argued with her. I was cynical, and it felt safe to me. Cynical was the right thing for me, and I wasn't about to give it up without a fight.

A wine-tasting trip to Napa. She was always wanting to do little things like that. I guess it comes from growing up poor; she was always trying to make up for things that she couldn't afford to do when she was younger. Like taking classes at UCLA, or buying the best clothes money could purchase.

Clothes that looked like a million bucks on her.

That's another reason I didn't trust her. Nobody can be that gorgeous and not be hiding something.

I hated her for her gorgeousness, and even more for the fact that, as years went by, I learned she was hiding nothing. She really _was_ kind and generous and compassionate, something I griped at her about when we were in the hotel suite in Napa, drunk from too much wine and silly with too much sunshine.

She always dragged me into the god-damned sunshine.

So I told her that she was a fucking cliché, and she called me an uptight snob, and we both laughed because it was so very, very true. And we drank more wine, the vintage that was so damned good I had an entire case shipped back to the house we shared in LA.

And we laughed some more, even though we actually were fighting, a little more serious than our tones would admit, and she touched my hair. We were sitting on the bed in my room of the suite, our clothes casual and rumpled from the day's efforts, and she touched my hair.

I never liked my hair until she touched it, and then it was transformed. It wasn't mousy and dull anymore, but shimmering and mysterious. Like silk between her fingers, and the world spun just a little bit because I knew in that moment that I wanted to kiss her, hard on the mouth, like my brother had, like men had kissed her before she married, back when she was a showgirl.

And it was such a little Greek tragedy going on in my heart as I shivered under her perfectly manicured fingers, smelling the wine on her breath and trembling with the desire to touch my brother's widow, this vaguely incestuous and wholly inappropriate desire that came from nowhere and overtook me with the force of a hurricane.

And she must have seen it in my eyes, because her hands lingered in my hair, and her blue eyes lingered on my lips, like she was wondering what they might taste like, like she was feeling the same incestuous beautiful dangerous thoughts I was thinking.

I wanted to run away, to pull back into the woman I'd shown the world, the bitter woman, the frigid ball-buster, the rich bitch queen of sarcasm—anything to avoid the chasm opening in my stomach and the pulse of energy flooding my cells. Anything to avoid the reality that was dawning on me, harsh and unrelenting in the odd glow of sunset through the hotel window.

I don't know who kissed whom, and I don't care. It was a kiss, and it turned into another, wine mixing with salt and woman and beauty and inappropriateness, and I fell into her like a madwoman, diving into the sheer foolishness of the act.

And we were shy afterwards, because we were both more aroused than I think either of us wanted to admit to ourselves, but not drunk enough to act on it.

And I coughed and she cleared her throat, saying something about the time, how she should turn in if we were going to avoid the traffic on the drive back to LA the next day.

And she went back to her room, and I stayed in mine, hugging the lumpy hotel pillow against my chest to slow my breathing.

We didn't discuss it again. But our fights, our arguments, have a new flavor to them now.

I rather enjoy fighting with L.K.


End file.
